We arrived at our hotel at 14:00, checked in and went for a swim in he pool. The hotel is very Thai, nothing I have seen before, everything is open outside apart from each apartment. The lobby is under a thai style "Gazeebo", and we were greeted with some kind of juice that was really strong but beautful. (As with the other blog posts, you can click the pictures to enlarge).
This was us arriving at the resort, before our swim in the hotel pool.
As I said in my earlier post, the apartment cost us about 9 pounds each per night including breakfast which is really cheap for being near the main beach and near all the restaurants and bars.
We relaxed for a couple of hours, Jamie had a sun bathe whilst Ben had a swim, and I had a swim and also wrote the previous post. :)
The above picture shows the pool surrounded by the chalet style apartments.
We then used the hotels bicycles to ride into the town centre, giving us a look at what is going on in the area. It was about 4ish, and we were "a bit peckish" so we rode the bikes into the town, locked them up and went and had a pizza from an "Italian Restaurant".
Ben's first meal was a Lasagne, which was stone cold in the middle, Ben then realised that changing to a Pizza was a safer option as he knew that the chances were, that wouldn't be microwaved! The pizza's were delicious, we paid the bill (around 3.50 pounds each including a sprite) and went to explore more of the local area.
We unchained the bikes and walked them along the promenade, I then looked after the bikes whilst Ben and Jamie went into the shop for a drink. Whilst they were in the shop, a thai family (all generations), asked me where I was from and how long I was in Thailand etc, they were really nice, and very happy to see us being interested in their home country. When Jamie and Ben came out of the store they asked if we could be in a picture with them (sounds strange to people from the rest of the world, but in Asia, taking a picture with people you meet is actually a normal process).
It was funny for us, as we were sat on a bench, and then they all started to get set up for what appeared to be a "Family Photo". They were very happy people, nice to see and nice to be welcomed by a family who were enjoying their day out on the beach. Below is a photo they took with our camera.
After we said goodbye, they came up to us and said "Welcome gift from Thailand". They gave us some fruit which is very popular in this region of the world. We have been eating it since we landed in Singapore and for them to give us one of their branches from the fruit tree, as a welcome gift was extremely kind and we were very grateful. It shows how nice the local people can be and how different the actions of people in this region of the world are, when meeting and greeting knew people into their country.
When they first asked for a photo, it wasn't a big surprise, as many people we have met on our travels have said "Thai people love to take photos of you and their family, when they meet you" and it also appeared in our research books before we came on our trip.
I placed the branch with the fruit in my bike basket, thanked the family for being kind said "Koh kun Krab" which means "Thank you" in Thai and when we next stopped at the next shop, we took a photo.
We cycled back to our hotel and rested by the pool. Later on, around 9ish, when planning what to do tomorrow, we realised that the best day to have a "Trip out" would be tomorrow, we walked from our hotel to find a tourism agent, walked the opposite direction to what we normally do and found a laundry/Tourism agent/shop "All-in-one".We booked a day for tomorrow to visit 4 islands. This includes a hotel pickup, boat ride to each island, a picnic, snorkaling (which we are looking forward to the most) and the transport back to the hotel.
After a slight barter, we managed to get this for 350 baht which is just under 7 pounds. This is a full day trip, picking us up at 9 and dropping us off back to the hotel at 16:30. We felt that was incredibly cheap for a full day out including food to the local off shore islands.
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